Video | Thursday, 5th October 2023

University celebrates National Poetry Day with moving new poem by Dr Kim Moore

Watch Dr Kim Moore reading her new poem which explores themes of motherhood as refuge

Manchester Metropolitan University is celebrating National Poetry Day by releasing a specially commissioned poem and film by award winning poet Dr Kim Moore exploring the themes of motherhood as refuge. 

Inspired by her mother’s recent cancer diagnosis, the bitter-sweet poem addresses themes of shelter, loyalty, and parental love as Dr Moore uses the concept of hiding in nature as a metaphor for protecting your child.

National Poetry Day, organised by Forward Arts Foundation, is held on the first Thursday of October and is an annual celebration encouraging everyone to make, experience, and share poetry with family and friends.

Dr Moore, poet and creative writing lecturer at the University’s Manchester Writing School, who won the Forward Prize for Poetry’s Best Collection last year, drew on her recent experience of waiting for her mother’s cancer treatment when writing the poem.

Dr Moore said: “Whilst I was working on this commission, my mother’s operation for stage 3 bowel cancer was postponed. There was nothing I felt less like writing about than refuge – it felt like the world was a scary, frightening place, and that the systems that should have offered her refuge were failing.

“As we negotiated with the health systems and bureaucracies to ensure she was taken care of, I began to think how my mother has always been a refuge for me. I couldn't stop thinking about the irony of the fact that her body was now a refuge for something that would ultimately kill her if she wasn’t operated on. 

“Motherhood has taught me so many things - but perhaps the most terrifying is that I am a refuge for my daughter.  What does it mean to become a living refuge, to be responsible for another’s safety? I wanted to explore in this poem how terrifying that can be, how beautiful, how messy and brutal and ugly and wild the act of mothering is.”

Motherhood as Refuge
Kim Moore

In the next life, if you’re a mouse,
I’ll be tall grass so you can run unnoticed,
or if you’re a brown rat, I’ll be a garden shed
that you can burrow under, if you’re a seabird
I’ll be an island you can nest on, if you’re a fish
I’ll come out in colours as a coral reef,
if you’re a spider, I’ll be a brick wall
with a creephole for you to hide in,
or if in another life, you find yourself
to be a bat, I’ll be the dark you need to hunt in,
I’ll be the barn you need to roost in,
or maybe you’ll find that you’ve come back
as a rarity, a Walney geranium that grows
only in one place, in all the world –
then wait for me, I’ll be that place, I’ll turn myself
into Walney Island, a strip and spit of land
grey seals can haul themselves upon,
and if you become a buff-tailed bumble bee,
I’ll be the compost heap you sleep in,
and even if you come back as something darker,
something harder – a tumour perhaps,
maybe you need a body to live inside,
I will give you mine, here is my bowel,
it will keep you safe from harm, I’ll put myself
to the bottom of every waiting list, turn down
the operation, this was the bargain,
the promise I made, my life as refuge,
my life as harbour, my life for yours each time. 

Manchester Met is home to Manchester Poetry Library, the first public poetry library in the North West. Since opening its doors in 2021, it has welcomed over 20,000 visitors into the space, with many thousands of people actively engaging with its online presence.

The University’s Manchester Writing School, the largest writing school in the UK, led by former poet laureate Professor Carol Ann Duffy, is this year celebrating 25 years of teaching poetry, fiction, scriptwriting, non-fiction, and publishing. Many writers have gone on to win major literary prizes including the Forward Prize for Poetry, Costa Book Award, and T.S. Elliot.